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One day after Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel disclosed details of the Obama Administration's proposed defense budget for fiscal 2015, I joined a group of analysts and journalists at the Pentagon to discuss the budget request with him. Hagel largely reiterated what he had said the previous day, but two things quickly became apparent in our meeting. First, he is determined to move the nation's military posture into a new era as the bulk of U.S. forces departs Afghanistan. Second, he thinks the 2011 Budget Control Act capping annual defense expenditures is one of the stupidest, most irresponsible exertions of congressional authority in modern times.

Apparently much of Congress agrees with him on the budget law, because three years after it began taking effect, legislators still have not permitted the full impact of the cuts contained in the law to be felt at the Pentagon or domestic agencies. The most recent palliative, known as the Bipartisan Budget Act, scaled back mandated reductions in fiscal 2014 and 2015 (the budget year beginning October 1). But the relief provided in 2015 is modest, and thereafter the strictures of the 2011 law remain in effect into the next decade. Hagel says that if the reductions are not scaled back or removed, the joint force will be smaller, less ready, and less well equipped than national security requires.

There has been some talk in Washington that Hagel is not having much impact at the defense department, but the proposed budget -- his first since becoming Secretary a year ago -- belies that. What I saw in my Tuesday meeting was an engaged and engaging leader who fully understands the intricacies of the changes he is proposing, and is committed to selling them on Capitol Hill. He acknowledged that will be a tough job, but signaled that he is on board for the duration of the Obama years, observing that his tenure is a four-quarter game in which the first quarter has just been completed. A pivotal factor in his success, though, will be convincing Congress that the 2011 law needs to be modified.

The term of art used in Washington to describe the most damaging mechanism in the law is "sequestration," which is derived from the Latin word meaning to remove or withdraw. The law caps the Pentagon's base budget -- the part not covering spending on current wars -- at $496 billion this year and next, and prescribes harsh spending remedies if the caps are exceeded. Military planners have been able to use supplemental appropriations for the war in Afghanistan to circumvent some of the reductions -- spending on overseas contingencies will increase this year even as troop deployments decline -- but that safety valve will start closing fast in 2015. So Hagel wants more permanent relief from the caps.

Secretary Hagel's background makes him an ideal person to attempt this tough selling job. A decorated war hero who volunteered with his brother for duty in Vietnam, he went on to become a successful entrepreneur in the cell-phone business and then served as a decidedly conservative Republican Senator from Nebraska. Anybody who has dealt with him can testify to his political skills, which combine affability with forceful persuasion. He's hard to dislike, and harder to ignore. But that doesn't necessarily mean he can break through the ideological ramparts that recently-elected members of the Republican Conference in the House have erected, so his budget plan contains a series of warnings to those who want to keep the budget law intact.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was wounded twice while serving in the Army during the Vietnam War. (Retrieved from http://www.defense.gov/dodcmsshare/newsphoto/2013-05/hires_130507-D-NI589-101.jpg)

If sequestration remains the law of the land, Hagel says, the Army will have to shrink to a point where its chief says it can no longer meet the demands of national strategy; the Air Force will have to mothball all of its most capable tankers; the Navy will have to retire the George Washington aircraft carrier and its air wing; and the Marine Corps will dip to a mere 175,000 warfighters. In the defense secretary's words, "the only way to implement sequestration is to sharply reduce readiness and modernization, which would almost certainly result in a hollow force -- one that isn't ready or capable of fulfilling assigned missions."

The implication is that wars might be lost, and warfighters might die for no good reason. Hagel has been circumspect in voicing this concern, perhaps because of his own experiences in Vietnam (at one point he had to extricate his brother from a wrecked troop carrier while he himself was on fire). Beyond that primary concern, Hagel's proposed budget gives legislators other incentives for changing the budget law. With a bigger budget, the negative consequences of Pentagon economies for constituents could be mitigated. Bases might not need to close, weapons plants could continue turning out weapons, and benefit cuts might be avoided.

It isn't clear whether Tea Party Republicans will respond to these inducements, but a peculiarity of the current political landscape is that conservative "deficit hawks" are more likely to have military facilities in their districts than progressives, because they tend to hail from places like the South and Midwest where bases have been more welcome. In other words, keeping the Budget Control Act intact could be bad news for the Republican heartland. Democratic strongholds like Massachusetts and Minnesota have almost no bases.

As long as sequestration remains the law of the land, though, the Pentagon has to have plans for complying with the budget caps. So what Hagel's staff has done, in effect, is prepare two budgets -- one that meets the mandates of the law, and the other that affords a higher level of spending consistent with what planners think is necessary to carry out national strategy. As Jason Sherman of Inside Defense.com pointed out earlier this week, the Hagel alternative, higher level would add an average of $28 billion above caps to the defense budget every year between 2015 and 2019 -- effectively cutting mandated reductions in half (as originally legislated, the sequestration cuts to defense spending were $55 billion annually through 2021).

Can the Secretary of Defense convince Congress to go along with his plan? After three years of fiscal chaos, many observers are doubtful. But Chuck Hagel is an unusually persuasive man, and he is passionately committed to getting his department the resources it needs to prepare for future challenges. Doctrinaire proponents of budget cuts might find it hard to argue with a fellow Republican who was repeatedly wounded in Vietnam when he warns them their plans are putting today's warfighters at risk.